Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance(49)

I don’t suppose Max would have left me alone with him if he’d had any suspicion otherwise. Apparently, despite Max’s heavy confession, I still trust his judgment. That comes as a bit of a surprise to me.

Anyway, I have a feeling I could probably take this shrimp down pretty easily, even if Max’s judgment is off.

“Anyway, Max and I have known each other for a long time. I know, I know, we don’t look like we run with the same kinda crowd, huh? Well, for your information I used to hang with some dangerous types back in my day,” Felix says.

“Back in the day? You can’t be much older than I am,” I remark, frowning.

He sighs and sets down his iPad. “I’m twenty-two, alright? But let’s just say I got an early start down the wrong track.”

“What happened?” I press him, eager for any information he might have. While Max is gone, and I’m stuck with this guy who seems all too willing to talk my ear off if I let him, it seems like the best opportunity I’m ever going to have to find out what’s actually going on. To make sense of what I’m actually feeling.

I mean, if Felix trusts Max and sees some of the same things in him that I do, maybe I’m not so crazy after all for falling for him.

“Well, I came up through famille d’accueil, kept getting bounced around from one group home to the next. I’ve always been too smart to really get along with my fellow foster kids,” he says, rolling his eyes. “It was never easy for me to make friends, I guess. Because I’m too smart, obviously. People just can’t handle it.”

“Mhmm,” I agree reluctantly.

Felix looks a little giddy to have me agree with him on something. “So anyway, when I was eighteen I aged out of the system and luckily I got into college here in Paris. Dieu merci. Finally got me out of that slummy little town down south. But I was a scholarship kid, you know, and not one of the athletic rides like you. No offense, of course.”

“Oh, none taken,” I say rapidly, smiling. He looks genuinely taken aback to have received a smile from a member of the female gender. It’s almost enough to make me pity him.

“So I was the poor kid, as usual. Once again, I didn’t fit in with my peers. While everyone else was partying it up, I had to find myself a job to keep my ass housed and my expenses paid. Lucky for me, I’ve always been a whiz with computers, so I started working at the administrative offices, in billing. It was cool, having access to everybody’s private information. I have the university to thank for sparking my interest in hacking,” Felix says, his eyes glittering behind his spectacles, as though remembering an especially fond memory.

“How did you end up running into Max, though?” I push onward, my curiosity overwhelming me. He gives me a slightly annoyed look.

“I’m getting there. Well, I started looking into everybody’s private school accounts… then their emails… and from there I figured out how to hack into people’s bank accounts, too. That was the big breakthrough. But most of the students were too broke to be worth anything, anyway. The real jackpot was the donors. You wouldn’t believe the kind of le fric these guys had. I’d never seen numbers like that! I started thinking, well, they had so much money they probably wouldn’t even notice if I started skimming a little off the top,” he explains, shrugging.

“Probably not the best idea,” I comment, looking at him dubiously.

“I was desperate, alright? I was tired of being the shrimpy little poor kid!” he says defensively. “I just wanted to have money for the first time in my life.”

“Alright, alright. Go on.” I know what he was doing was wrong, but at the same time, I get it. There were a few poor kids in my classes growing up, and they always struggled. Grades, getting to class on time, bullies, everything was a struggle.

“Well, this went on for a while, no problem. I finally had cash in my hand. It was awesome. But then one day I get this letter, pushed under my dorm room door. And it says they know who I am and what I’m doing, and if I don’t pay them back every cent with interest by tomorrow, they’re gonna flay me alive,” he says, fidgeting.

“Geez!” I gasp, pulling my legs up into the armchair. “How did you get out of that?”

“Ah, that’s where our hero Max comes in,” Felix says triumphantly, brightening up. “You see, I found out everything about everyone who was affiliated with the university, and I remembered seeing something about a guy named Maksim. I remember thinking, hey that’s a weird name. And so I researched him using some… less than legal methods… and found out he was running with the same kind of shady figures I was stealing from. Tracked him down, begged for his help. With dignity, obviously.”